7 ms·

I don't care about your code challenge

117 points by bastawhiz 13y ago

dkasper 13y ago
Building a full production grade website seems extreme, but giving a prebuilt website to a front end candidate and asking them to add a few simple pages or features is basically fizzbuzz type vetting. I also like it when coding "challenges" are timeboxed to say 1-2 hours. This keeps the time expectations reasonable for both the interviewer who has to read a bunch of candidates' challenges and the interviewee who has to do them for (potentially) a bunch of gigs. The type of coding challenge a company asks (interview questions also) can be one of the most important data points to use to judge a company's culture...
- mason55 13y ago
  Yes exactly, this is overboard. We have "take home test" (I hate that term but haven't come up with anything better) for both our front-end and back-end candidates. They're (a) Short - 45 minutes to an hour (b) Only as complex as necessary (for the front end we provide and end-point serving JSON, for example, so they don't have to worry about that) (c) Real problems we've run into, distilled down into a form appropriate for an interview (d) Made up of problems that we were having candidates do on the whiteboard before we developed the at-home test, meaning they're not super complex I think that at-home coding is the perfect second step to an interview (after a phone screen). It's more realistic than whiteboard coding. You have the internet at your fingertips. You don't have the pressure of an interviewer sitting there. You have syntax checking. From my side, I don't have to waste 30 - 60 minutes on a bad candidate. And, assuming the code is good, reviewing it provides an awesome first hour of an in person interview. And the problems I give you to take home would have been given to you in person anyway, so you're not spending any more time than you would have if you'd just come in for an interview. The issue here is that the tests he's being given are bad examples of a take home test, not that take home tests are bad ipso facto.
  - henrik_w 13y ago
    Have you (or people on your team) done the task yourselves? It's easy to underestimate the effort required.
    - mason55 13y ago
      Yes absolutely. They're all problems that we've solved in the process of building out our product. In addition to that, as I mentioned, we originally gave them as white board questions, so we're well aware of the issues that come up when solving the problems and the effort required to resolve the issues. Our front-end test is a bit longer than the back-end test with a tradeoff of a shorter in person interview, but the front-end test shouldn't take more than 90 minutes. One of our problems is a small matching algorithm. Another is a thread safety problem. The front-end test consists of pulling JSON data from a server, formatting it, and posting a single action back to the server. It sounds like we're in a minority though. Reading these other posts it seems like a lot of the tests are very onerous (build a small trading system? that is a ton of work).
      - MAGZine 13y ago
        > They're all problems that we've solved in the process of building out our product Have you gotten feedback on the questions? It's easy to say that it's a valid question, but when you're close to the problem, it's easy to make a mistake since you might encounter a specific sort of problem that others might not be nearly as familiar with. The difference to me I think is that yours are very specific, and "build a small trading system" can be very general. If it's timeboxed, there might be only so much that you can do--i.e. you might not be expected to complete the task. You want to test someone's knowledge, without being too 'in depth'. A candidate that can solve a problem on his own in 30 minutes isn't necessarily better than a candidate who can solve the problem in 10 minutes with the assistance of Google. 0.02
        mason55 13y ago
        Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely take a look at getting an outside opinion on our takehome test
theg2 13y ago
If a company asked me that, I'd tell them thanks but no thanks and end the interview. Ask me a few questions, have me solve your riddles, see if I'd work well with your team/company. But building an entire production ready site? Ain't nobody got time for that.
- laureny 13y ago
  Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site, this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article. If I were a front end developer, I would much prefer to be asked to write a quick, tailored to fit within the time allotment (e.g. one hour) web site rather than answering obscure coding puzzles that probably have little relevance with what I'll actually be doing at the company. As the interviewer, I would phrase it as: "Build as much as you can in one hour, with the following functionalities in order of decreased priorities: login, cart, etc...". Then I would judge you on how much of it you built, how solid each of the features are, etc. In my book, you can choose to go broad (build a lot of features, albeit superficially) or broad (only a few features, but well designed, tested, clean code).
  - trustfundbaby 13y ago
    > Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article. How can you be so sure? Were you there? You're essentially calling the author a liar without even pretending to have access to more data than that author. Thats just rude. If you know something that the rest of us don't that would lead you to make such a forceful assertion, please share.
  - bastawhiz 13y ago
    > Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site, this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article. I'm sad to say that this is untrue, and that in writing this article I have not exaggerated the requirements in the least. I'm not going to name the company, but the requirements of the challenge indicate that it should be something you would be comfortable putting in production. The "challenge" is a repo on the company's github. I'm sure you could probably easily find it with a bit of sleuthing.
neakor 13y ago
The code challenge is usually just one part of the interview process to see if you can produce a quality product within a certain amount of time. It's not designed to tell every single thing you outlined in your post. It's meant to provide some signal before the actual on-site interview occurs. The on-site interview is expensive on the company's part, it is easier to filter out people who can't solve a simple full-stack solution. Companies who ask things like these are looking for people who understand both front and back ends. In short, just knowing either front or backend but not both, is not enough for the company.
- RogerL 13y ago
  We all know why they are asking candidates to do this. The question is whether this is a reasonable way to go about getting this information.
  - ArtDev 13y ago
    My work speaks for itself and I am more than happy to share working codes samples. I had someone offer me a paid test. I refused because I am too busy. By requiring coding tests, employers and managers may be accidentally selecting only desperate candidates.
mbell 13y ago
I have to say, that headline font is awful and the link highlighting on the blog's front page is worse. There is a bit of oddness in declaring yourself a front-end person by talking about not needing to be tested as a back-end person when you're applying for a front-end job yet having a blog with a such a jarring front-end.
- untog 13y ago
  I hope one day we can get to the point where we discuss the content of a post on HN, and not cast subjective opinion about its presentation. I don't think there is anything wrong with the headline font. I'm not too fond of the link highlighting used on the front page, but it's fine. Really. And you can be a "front end person" and have very, very little to do with design these days. Entire webapps are made on the front-end.
  - mbell 13y ago
    Presentation is always important. It doesn't matter if it's a scientific paper or blog, presenting in a clear and intelligible way is critical to communication in all forms. As for the content: I've dealt with numerous developers who only want to do one thing, only backend, only front-end, only design. I've constantly run into shenanigans when working with such people in a fast paced dynamic environment. "I can't work on the frontend till the backend api is finished", "I can't work on the backend till the frontend data requirements are defined", "I can't work on the frontend till the UI/UX are defined". It's a never ending requirements dependency argument. More capable full stack people are able to mock or fake the bits that are as of yet undefined allowing them to continue working on their core piece while gaining a better understand of the system as a whole. This allows them to contribute to the product definition at all levels instead of just living in their own little piece of it, waiting for definition from outside.
- jasonlotito 13y ago
  So, I decided to treat your awful comment like you decided to treat the original article. > I have to That's not true. You don't have to reply. No one is requiring you do that. You've already started off by lying. This means anything else you might want to contribute is awful and worthless. > say You didn't. You typed it out. I'm pretty sure you didn't "say" anything. And now you are trying to be confusing. That's just awful. > , that headline font is awful Well, that's your opinion. Your opinion is worthless because you haven't validated your credentials. > and the link highlighting on the blog's front page is worse. So, not the page we were directed to. Did you happen to check out his Facebook page, too? Did you decide to comment on his awful dinner choice last night? > There is a bit of oddness This whole sentence is odd. In fact, that sentence is far worse than anything the OP did. You would say it's awful. In this case, you'd be right, because it's a shit sentence. > in declaring yourself a front-end person by talking about not needing to be tested as a back-end person That's not what he's doing. He's saying he's a front-end person, and was tested for back-end work. He's not saying he's a front-end person by talking about not needing to be tested as a back-end person. Those are two completely different things. If you don't immediately understand why, I apologize, but you wrote the awful and confusing sentence. > when you're applying for a front-end job yet having a blog with a such a jarring front-end. What's jarring about it? Surely you aren't speaking of the design. That would be a designer, not a front-end person. And we've established he's not apply for a designer's position. Unless you are suggesting all designers should be expert programmers? Because that's the only way what you said remotely makes any sense. Awful, just awful.
billyjobob 13y ago
His complaints seem to be that this method of take-home-project is not as good as the method of hiring the candidate to work in the office temporarily for week's trial. That is true, but this is still superior to a typical interview. (Also not all candidates and not all employers can spare a week to do a trial.) Nevertheless you should never agree to complete a full production project without being paid.
- gesman 13y ago
  Or decode the source code upon the full payment.
- theboss 13y ago
  Is it? I "interviewed" at one YC funded startup in particular and they asked me to build a trivially small and simple js application (even though I applied for a DevOps position, but I guess devops is different for everyone...). The only communication up to this point was over e-mail and I sent a resume. I built it. It worked. Then they said my application was not aesthetic enough and said thank you for your time. The whole thing seemed backwards... In my opinion (as someone who has been going through the process for a few years now throughout undergrad with internships and now looking for a full time job at the end of my masters), very few companies do the "coding" problem right. I don't want to work for you if you ask me to write a nested for loop and regurgitate the overhead involved in searching a b-tree. I also don't want to work for you if you ask me to build a application with no pre-defined criteria. In my opinion...the best coding question you can ask me is fizzbuzz types of questions or pseudo-code for something complex (to see if the candidate can think through the steps of solving the complex problem without having to waste the time solving it). So far not a single company has done the below.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Pretty sure I interviewed at the same place, with the same reaction. I wasn't too impressed.
ChristianMarks 13y ago
Lately I have been solving coding challenges. For the sake of solving them only. I submit them, wait for "good job!" or "nice work!" and move on to the next challenge--at the next company. After a few months or years of doing this, I may decide to advance to technical phone screens on shared documents. I'll try that for a while. After that who knows...
- jcoder 13y ago
  I understand the desire for a challenge, but you might consider not submitting them. Effort goes into advancing a candidate's application at each stage, so someone out there is wasting their time so you can get your "good job!" boost.
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    It's a tough market. It can take years to hone your problem-solving skills. And years after that to hone your technical-phone-screen-on-shared-document skills. This takes deliberate practice. When I'm ready to advance to the next stage, I will. There is a serious point: companies often aren't forthcoming about day-to-day working conditions. But the response you get to your puzzle solving activities can be telling.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
henrik_w 13y ago
Even "small" programming assignments take a lot of time. Several years ago, I applied for a job as a developer for a financial trading system. The take-home assignment was to build a small trading system that received buy and sell orders from the command line, and executed trades when the price matched. The input was just: buy/sell, price and number of shares. This functionality is pretty simple, but it still took many hours to code. My feeling was that they thought it would perhaps take an hour to do. It was fun and interesting to do, but it took much longer than I thought. I think the companies giving the challenges should have their own engineers do the task, so they get a good handle on how much they are asking from the applicant. And of course it also depends on if it is a buyer's or seller's market (jobwise that is, not in terms of my "trading" system). If there is a lot of competition for developers, maybe they should give too big projects.
McGlockenshire 13y ago
We used to ask job candidates to do something similar. Since then, publishing code samples became the normal thing to do, so we simply require code samples instead, and give out the coding task only when they have nothing at all to share with us. If you're in the job market, publishing some sample code, even if it's just a throwaway toy instead of, say, a full blown OSS project, can be a great tool for people to evaluate you as a candidate.
- silverbax88 13y ago
  I would never go to an interview which wanted to present me with a code challenge, and I don't have publicly available code repositories for you to browse. What I do have is years of experience building mission critical applications that move millions of dollars per day in transactions, and I have a solid track record of being easy to work with. I am good at what I do and I work hard to be an asset to any company that employs me, and I work hard to be enjoyable to work with. If you can't be good enough to figure that out from a conversation and looking at my track record, why would I work for you? BTW, I haven't had to look for a job in over 13 years - although I've worked for several companies during that time.
  - mooreds 13y ago
    tl;dr: if companies know that they are going to miss quality candidates with a code challenge, and are ok with that, it's ok to have one. If candidates are ok with giving some companies the miss because they won't put up with a challenge, that's ok too. And code challenges are good for some types of positions and not others. I agree that companies are excluding people such as yourself with these coding challenges. That's their right, just as it is your right to not apply to any companies that require such challenges. If someone is finding good candidates with a coding challenge, that's great. If someone is finding good jobs while avoiding coding challenges, that's great too. I will say that there's some nuance implied in your comment that simply isn't present in any of the github/coding challenge blog posts that have popped up on HN over the last few days. Whether a coding challenge is appropriate doesn't just depend on the company or the candidate--it also depends on the position! It's far easier to test junior/mid level skills than senior skills in a 1-2 hour task. Geez, some of the skills you mention above would be hard to test in a 1-2 day task. When you are looking for esoteric, softer, or more senior skills (requirements gathering, or architecture), you need other ways of evaluating candidates beyond a code challenge. Things like what you suggest: conversations, references, etc. Of course, there are some "senior" folks out there who aren't great coders even though they talk a good game, and if coding is what the position requires, a code challenge is fine.
websitescenes 13y ago
Totally agree. I am so busy creating and making real products, that I just don't have time for silly quizzes or challenges. If you like my work, hire me. If you don't, then don't waste my time. I was seeking employment in the Bay area briefly and did three code tests. Absolute waste of time that didn't reflect my skill, diligence or anything for that matter. After I realized that these techniques were the norm, I quit looking. I have way better things to do with my time.
dustingetz 13y ago
Pro tip: these tests are filtering mechanism on only one candidate funnel. Go figure out a way to get in through another funnel. Impress someone at a meetup, send a targetted email. If you can't distinguish yourself from the masses, you are the masses.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  Personally, I wouldn't bother. Asinine requirements are usually the product of asinine leadership and toxic environment. Just find another company to apply to.
JSno 13y ago
Though it really based on what lever you are at. This kinda tests are always for entry-mid level recruitment I guess. I agree with author 100 percent.
llamataboot 13y ago
On the other hand, as someone currently looking for my first dev job, I'd /much/ rather have a take home code challenge, where I can work at my usual pace, with my usual tools, without stress than have to do a code challenge while someone hovers over my shoulder. The take homes have been time intensive - I would say the average one has taken about 15 hours to do, but I feel they much better reflect my ability to code than real time nervous coding.
- overgryphon 13y ago
  Your perspective changes when you need to find that extra 15 hours of time while also working full time. Apply to 2-3 companies at once, and all of a sudden 30-45 hours are added on to your normal work week.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
I actually had one of these and I won't do another one either. Here's the gist of how it went down: 1) first part was the "personality" interview. Two "HR" people blew smoke up my ass for about 30 minutes about how awesome my site and my work was, then asked me to do a "code challenge". I agreed - I mean, how bad could it be? 2) The code challenge. I was given a PSD with a straight forward design. Asked to code it, make sure it worked in legacy browsers, publish on a server and show them the code on GitHub 3) Passed and then was asked to come back and explain some of my coding decisions. I was told this was more for show and I was already in effect hired, I just had to pass this last hurdle. It turned out to be a very confrontational, inquisition type of an interview. Not at all the type of laid back code review I'm used it. I got pretty frustrated by the two "Senior" devs who seemed to take great pride in tearing my code and my decisions apart. After my first heated exchange with one of the devs, I actually asked them how many of the sites listed in the gallery on their site they actually tested and validated the code on. They said "All of them, why do you ask?" I told them I actually ran all of their sites through the W3C validation site and none of them passed. Every single one had over 60 errors on it. I basically said, "If standards are so important to you, then why are you holding people who don't even work for your company to a higher standard than those who actually do?" There was a long silence and then I finally spoke up and said, "Clearly, this company has its priorities in the wrong order. Thank you for time, but I'm not interested." and got up and walked out. I got several worried calls from the company recruiter, but by then I was so pissed at how much of my time they had wasted, and vowed never to do something like it again.
- atmosx 13y ago
  Hahaha good going. Interesting story, thanks for sharing.
- zalew 13y ago
  > I got pretty frustrated by the two "Senior" devs who seemed to take great pride in tearing my code and my decisions apart. Two possibilities: a) You got a glimpse of how your life on the job would look like. b) Just like qualified specialists can be terrible interviewees, they can be terrible interviewers. They just screwed up.
ForHackernews 13y ago
I happen to really like coding challenges. I much prefer them to a "technical interview" situation, which I find very stressful--trying to answer difficult questions in real time. However, the coding challenges I've done for applications have always been in the vein of "solve this interesting puzzle and show us how you did it", not "do some boring day-to-day work, but do it for free".
- ddoolin 13y ago
  This exactly. With the exception of my current employer, who asked me to make a small static site with some JS oddities (about 6 hours total), they've all been fairly simple challenges just to get a grip on my thinking process, not really have me do the routine stuff.
sumodds 13y ago
I agree and disagree. I am a candidate and prefer coding challenges provided they are reasonable. Meaning, if you are wanting to check the person's ability in x, check the person ability in x, not y. So for example give a starter code with part that would showcase person talent in x is left out. Yes, this involves prior effort on the part of the company to come up with this exercise and on the person. I don't quite vouch for code samples, because it is very difficult to understand where they came up with the ideas and who wrote the code, and if it was a multi-person project. In the former case, it is a very controlled experiment and one you designed, so one can judge much better.
goshx 13y ago
While I agree that the request to build, deploy and open source the code of a website is a bit too much, I think you are exaggerating a little bit on the why's you wouldn't do it. "I'm not equipped to do your challenge" - really? "Engineers aren't different" - again, really? Rhetorical question: you don't want the job, do you? I am not sure if the issue is with the hiring process, or with the candidates' ego here. Candidates. Plural. As the article's author doesn't seem to be the only one. Apparently there is a lot of people that believe they are rockstars and they don't need the job, the job needs them. Challenges like this help to figure out non technical skills as well, like: how committed a candidate is; how much he wants that job. I'd rather hire a junior that is committed than a senior that is not.
- 0A0D66 13y ago
  You're not supposed to be committed to a job.
  - goshx 13y ago
    When I work for a company, I want to make sure that whatever I am working on will help the company succeed. I want to be part of that success. This is commitment. I am not there just to get the pay check for my 9 to 5 hours and move on to another company because they offered me extra $5 bucks.
    - sanskritabelt 13y ago
      This is 2013. You gotta look out for Number One.
    - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
      If only modern companies had a similar view toward their employees. The fact is, whatever your particular situation, most companies don't return the exuberant loyalty you have for them. Although some have managers who are skilled enough salesmen to make you believe otherwise.
      - 13y ago
darklajid 13y ago
I understand the point the author's trying to make. For me, personally, this would be the better choice to judge my skills - and probably would lead to better chances for me to get the job. I suck at these braindead trick questions that are considered 'clever'. I'm not comfortable around a whiteboard only, being grilled by one or more other people while thinking. I'm not slow, not really anyway. But I'm faster and better the more I know about the stuff at hand. I'll be good on the job, I'll suck solving math puzzles that some guy just read about in a book that ranks high on Amazon's list of code puzzle collections.. So - I'm glad that there's both. The author obviously would've preferred to show his skills live, in a discussion. This guy here would be happy to hand you a (small, mind you - I agree with the time-sink argument) finished project and discuss _that_ afterwards.
memracom 13y ago
To my mind the ideal challenge is no more than 4 hours. You make an appointment. At the agreed time, the hiring company emails you the requirements. If you have clarification question, they remain available throughout the challenge time to answer them. From a hiring point of view the challenge should have some vague areas in the requirements in order to test whether the candidate is a coder or a developer who asks decent clarification questions. The challenge requires no special tools to do, either JS in a browser or Python or something like that. The exact requirments of the dev environment are specified at the time the appointment is made, i.e. if you want the person to develop in Python 2.6.3 or to use JS with backbone.js, then the candidate can get set up in a few minutes and be ready. I consider 4 hours to be a max. 45 minutes is a bit short IMHO and does not allow for including unit tests. Also, I believe that a good challenge should ask for a complete set of unit tests as well. But a full working MVP is way overboard and is too complex for the hirer to make meaningful decisions based on the outcome. Any challenge should be followed up by an interview in which questions focus on the solution as developed by the candidate. The why of choices and the intent are important factors, probably more important than the actual code.
- saryant 13y ago
  This is essentially what we do. Write a program to fetch some data from S3 using these credentials we made you, perform some analysis on them (algorithm question, generally with recursion) and then display the final output. And write a test for it. We provide a stubbed-out Rails project on Github so they don't have to know all the details about S3. With this we test three things: 1) Can they quickly find missing info on Google/Stack Overflow (S3 stubs) 2) Can they handle recursion? (Algorithm question) 3) Can they write a test? Then we go over their submission on Skype. It's worked pretty well for us.
kohanz 13y ago
You have no idea how the "challenge" was completed. A candidate could have rent-a-coder-ed the project, refactored it a bit, and slapped their name on it. Sure, if you ask no follow-up questions after the challenge is completed. However, with a few well-placed questions about the implementation and some inspection of the code, it'll be quite clear whether you're talking to the author or not. We once gave a (non-web-dev) programming "challenge" (I thought it was a joke/insult given the candidate's claimed experience) to a senior dev candidate. Mind you, this was on-site. I even tested it by putting our newly hired grad to the test and he aced it within 20 minutes. We gave the candidate an hour to complete it (and added a 30 minute extension when he was struggling). The challenge involved developing something against an SDK (interacting with a camera) and we gave him internet access and the SDK examples to work off of. In the end, he produced something not quite what we were asking, but he was sure to claim it as his work. Although it wasn't ideal, I was prepared to say that he "passed" the assignment, because he was close and I was sympathetic to factors of stress and nervousness. As he was toured around the facility, I inspected the code and saw that he was completely passing off one of the SDK examples as his own work (diffs showed only two variable names had been changed). The reason his code didn't quite do what we wanted, is that he wasn't even able to tweak the SDK example to do what we asked. He was a complete fraud and never mind technical ability, we couldn't have dishonesty like that on the team. Before that interview I thought those kind of challenges were a joke, but after this I saw their value. Of course, their value depends highly on how their are implemented and targeted, but dismiss their usefulness at your own peril.
- Iftheshoefits 13y ago
  This is a lopsided view. You don't indicate how long your "newly hired grad" was working there, whether the "SDK" was an in-house SDK or a third-party one, what the candidate's resume skills were in comparison to the kind of programming around the SDK your test was designed for, etc. These are all relevant details, because except for the most trivial of SDKs and their appropriate domains, a thoughtful, skilled developer might spend an entire hour simply reading through the SDK and/or its documentation to get a handle on its capabilities. So I don't get that your story is an anecdote in support of the potential usefulness of code challenges. Instead, what I gather from your story is that your company prefers candidates who practice cowboy, shoot-from-the-hip programming instead of thoughtfully approaching a new, unfamiliar SDK and pondering how it might be used to solve problems related to the domain it was built for, then applying this thoughtful process to provide a solution to a problem. In fact, if I'm given a non-trivial SDK and told "write a program that does X using this SDK; you have one hour", my response might be something very similar to the above, directed at the person giving the "assignment" out, followed by a polite but firm indication that the company doesn't meet my requirements.
greenyoda 13y ago
I wonder whether the same companies that insist that job candidates spend a day of their lives on a "code challenge" are the same ones complaining about good developers being impossible to find.
coldcode 13y ago
If someone asked me to write an iOS app for them for free as a test I'd offer them to download some of my work from the App Store. Otherwise, no.
jbcurtin2 13y ago
The worst thing about code-challenges, is they never give feed back. We're sorry, but what you produced is not good enough. We're not going to tell you what you missed. At least technology tells you what you missed. If you have a standard, have it documented so that I'm not firing a bullet into the dark. Chances are I'm just as good as you; but you won't know because I haven't seen your coding style. You're on my project, you code like me. I'm on yours, you better believe I'll code like you. And then there is the times they like to dismiss you for it but have some other reason and use it as a cover. So you worry about your code not being perfect and you develop a ritual to validate yourself before it goes through a compiler. Yep, I write my code three(avg) times now. 10 lines, over and over until it's a effing poem. It's called ocd. Coding challenges, pfft, worthless. There is only one company that I did a coding challenge for in the past year and it's because they were really awesome people. - I'm here to make a product and work with a team. I'm not here to explain shit to you just so you can tell me to look up the documentation. If I take the time to explain my code to you, you better well explain why you think something is better rather then telling me to google it. fufff, I needed that.
- eropple 13y ago
  > The worst thing about code-challenges, is they never give feed back. We're sorry, but what you produced is not good enough. We're not going to tell you what you missed. This is most interviews in general, and I hate that. When interviewing candidates I try to give actionable feedback to each of them, regardless of whether it results in whiny emails back (and it often does). There was only one case in recent memory where I couldn't because he'd gotten literally nothing right while bragging about how fun it was to write thousand-line functions. Eek.
ndesaulniers 13y ago
I told FB the same thing, too!
mrpoptart 13y ago
Your td;dr: should go at the top. Having started working at a company that asked me to do one of these, it was different specifically in that it was paid. This means it's not a waste of anyone's time. A time-constrained, feature-rich project shows a number of things about a programmer including how they handle pressure, how they prioritize their tasks, whether their estimates are reasonable, and whether they know about what you're hiring them for.
moron4hire 13y ago
I get approached all the time by recruiters who supposedly love my work and want me to interview with their clients. It's getting harder to tell them that I'm not interested in a job. My consulting is doing okay and I'm actually starting to hire out some work. Why would I give that up, for a dice roll with a good chance of losing on whether or not my new boss turns out to be an asshole?
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  Good point. Getting to get back into consulting for that reason.
redblacktree 13y ago
If you use a coding challenge as part of your hiring process, please take the time to give feedback to candidates. I recently completed a code challenge, and I was told by the recruiter that there were "problems with it," but he didn't get into any specifics because he was just passing on the message, and no one else has called either. I look at it as a dodged bullet, since it's a sign that they don't respect my time. I expect that had I gotten the job, they wouldn't have respected my free time or created a good work/life balance. Regardless, it has left a bad taste in my mouth. After I've spent about 12 hours of my free time (in addition to my 40 hr/week job), the least they could do is give me 15 minutes of their time to call or write out some comments about it.
ukd1 13y ago
If you're being hired to code, expect to be asked to code in an interview process.
- mellery451 13y ago
  not many other fields of work where that analog exists, so I call BS. What's the personalized test given to CPAs? Sales? Marketers? You ask about past experience, accomplishments, etc..but rarely put them under the gun to produce on the spot.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    This problem is typically solved through certification. As none exists in our world, we have to improvise.
justrudd 13y ago
Many years ago (wow...almost 10 now...I'm so old...) I was given a phone screen and at the end of the screen I was given a question to code a solution to and email it in. Since this was for a job across the country, I figure what the hell. The problem was - A man has to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river. He has a rowboat, and it can only carry him and one other thing. If the fox and the chicken are left together, the fox will eat the chicken. If the chicken and the corn is left together, the chicken will eat the corn. Write a program that will help the man make the correct decision and explain the operational complexity. I was given an hour to come up with a solution. I worked on it about half-an-hour coming up with the algorithm. And then for some reason my brain keyed in on the "write a program" part of the question. So I wrote the following in C++ (from memory so may not be exact) - int main(int argc, char** argv) { std::cout << "Man takes chicken, leaves fox and corn, and returns" << std::endl << "Man takes fox, leaves corn, and returns with chicken" << std::endl << "Man leaves chicken and takes corn, leaves corn with fox, and returns" << std::endl << "Man takes chicken back across" << std::endl; return 0; } It was a program that would tell the man the correct way to get everything across the river. Must have been an OK answer because I got flown up and ended up working for them for 4 years (before a series of bad jobs that have finally lead back to something good).
saumil07 13y ago
Sigh - yet another hiring process complaint post. As an employer hopefully I can shed some light here. a) If you are trying to hire 5 engineers, say, you need to talk to ~25 candidates at least. It's a competitive market. b) If you aim to talk to 25 candidates in a short period of time, you need to have SOME standard way to evaluate candidates if you don't want to just throw darts on the board. Being sloppy with process is bad for companies and the engineers and a waste of everyone's time. c) In order to create a standard process, you have a very limited # of options to work from. I've seen comments like "do a co-working day to get a real sense" or "do a contract and see them work with you daily" positioned as realistic options. They are not. If an engineer has an existing full-time job they don't have the time to do co-working days or contracts. d) The other options are 1) whiteboard interviews 2) coding challenges 3) some combination thereof. e) Lots of candidates hate whiteboard interviews. Lots of candidates hate coding challenges too. Neither is a perfect system but it's better than doing nothing or asking for co-working time. f) We use coding challenges at the top end but we time-box it to 3 hours. If someone asked us to pay for the time, we would happily do so. g) Our coding challenges have 3 different problems so candidates can pick whichever aligns best to skills. One problem is JavaScript-heavy and 2 others are Ruby/Rails-heavy. h) Several engineers on the team solved the coding challenges on a timed basis before we put them out to candidates. Doing otherwise would be stupid/unfair. i) In the few cases where we've been able to do 1-2 co-working days, we have offered to pay for the candidate's time. Not full freight consulting dollars but something that indicates our seriousness. j) In this case, the OP got caught by a dumb coding challenge to build a full website. But the headline paints with a broad brush because coding challenges by themselves are not evil. They are a tool that can be used well or poorly. That's all.
- mempko 13y ago
  Remember, as an employer, you are getting more out of the employee than they are getting out of you. Otherwise you don't make a profit. I understand why you want to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. But seriously, fuck you. How about a better answer. Unless the person just came out of school, don't treat then as though they just came out of school.
  - 13y ago
candybar 13y ago
Every time this comes up, I find it quite depressing how everyone becomes so self-centered. Half the comments here are along the lines of: I'm good at X, but bad at Y, so X is a better way to judge programmers than Y and if you do Y, your process is broken because I'm awesome despite being bad at Y. Another small fraction of the comments are: I don't care if you can't do X despite being good or won't do Y because it's a big hassle - the bug is a feature and it filters out people who are not into our instasnapsocialmobileresponsiveapp. Get real guys, no one's that into you, some people are just desperate. Pretending that you're some prestigious company where everyone wants to work doesn't make it so - you have to earn it and if you get there, you won't have to pretend because you'd get so many resumes that you'll be forced come up with a quick way to be selective. The secret to hiring is just like what pg said about the secret to VC investing - get better at distinguishing good programmers from bad ones so that you don't need to waste so much of everyone's time to make a decision. Being indecisive, after being clearly presented with enough information is a sign of incompetence.
flippybean 13y ago
If you are going to do a code challenge, and take time out of your life to work on something without pay, the very least a company should do in return is provide feedback, good or bad. too many times I've done a code challenge and it's never even mentioned in follow up interviews. And if I don't pass the challenge, I should learn something from my time spent, right?
lumens 13y ago
Many companies butcher their interview processes, so it's not surprising to hear this story. That said, OP's refusal of code challenges all together seems every bit as silly as being asked to jump through the hoops described. If we were to take a moment to think about the purpose of interviews at a high level: Initial Interviews (Phone/HR/etc) - Determine mutual interest - Estimate likelihood of match - Check for red flags Follow-up Interviews (With team/Code Challenges/etc) - Confirm initial impressions - Evaluate finer points of fit (skills, etc) - Determine final interest Each of the interview goals above apply to both the interviewer and interviewee. Failures happen when either side tries to monkey with this formula too much. If your job is to write code and be an engineer, it's not outlandish to think that you'll be asked to write code as part of your evaluation for a new position. It's also not too much to expect that as an interviewee, you should be properly sold on the job by the interviewer before being asked to invest time to prove your skills. (Both sides should estimate high likelihood of match before confirming impressions) If the company's preference is to hire full-stack engineers into front-end jobs, fine — more power to them. But those expectations should be included way up front in the process, so candidates like OP can mark a "red flag" and opt out of additional interviews. TL;DR: Properly setting expectations in the interview process is ultra-important, but rarely practiced. Note: I'm the founder of Mighty Spring (https://www.mightyspring.com https://www.mightyspring.com), an anonymous, passive job discovery site. Part of our service is to help our clients (companies) hire more efficiently by coaching them up on interview process improvements like this. We're in private beta now, but send out new candidate invites regularly.
mathattack 13y ago
The single most important point is that the process is candidate unfriendly. You can get away with being candidate unfriendly during college hiring. Maybe. If you're not hiring at a top CS school. You can't get away with it when you are trying to reel in a 10x superstar. Those types of candidates need to be wooed. If you make someone do too much work in the process, you'll only wind up with candidates who hate their jobs, not love their jobs. That's not to say don't make sure people are smart. And the idea of proving coding skills is good too. But the manner has to be consistent with respecting the time and skills of an expert.
pedalpete 13y ago
For the most part, I'm happy to do most of the coding challenges I've been asked to do. I've been lucky that in most of the challenges I've been able to learn something about how to make a certain algorithm that I hadn't done before, of I've enjoyed the feedback about using method x vs. method y. However, I've had two coding challenges which I did not like. In the first was just too time consuming (more than 3 hours) and I stopped working on it because I felt it was taking too much time, and the second was on-site without an internet connection where when I drew a blank on using setInterval, and couldn't remember document.getElementsByClass (I was trying getElementByClass) I was unable to look-up the answer, which basically meant I had to sit there wracking my brain trying to remember and completely failed a test which would have been a walk in the park otherwise. At the same time, the two companies that I've chosen to work for have not asked for coding challenges. My current employer did look at my GitHub profile, I don't think my previous employer did. I think that supplying sample code should be enough for most employers, hopefully there is a way to confirm the applicant wrote the code they are taking credit for (I've had somebody claim to build one of my sites before, so it's happened. I got a bunch of e-mails by people asking me for a reference). Another good way for businesses to decide on a coding question (if they decide to do one at all) is to take questions from larger successful technology businesses. I had one company ask me to complete one of the questions from Spotify https://www.spotify.com/au/jobs/ https://www.spotify.com/au/jobs/, it didn't take very long at all (may 40 minutes) and if it is good enough for Spotify, it is probably good enough for your company.
EpicEng 13y ago
I don't care about code challenges either, I just always assumed that people don't care that I don't care.
leeny 13y ago
i don't think every candidate should be interviewed the same way, and i don't think these processes should be set in stone. if you look great on paper (e.g. have some nice name brands on your resume, are a minor celebrity in some relevant community, or come in through a strong internal referral), there's no need for stuff like this. however, if you don't fall into one of these categories, until there's a reliable way to tell if you're good from your resume, having an OPTIONAL coding challenge is a great way to get your foot in the door. coding challenges shouldn't be about making people jump through arbitrary procedural hoops. they should be about making the (very broken) eng hiring process more meritocratic for people who'd never get their foot in the door otherwise.
throwaway84 13y ago
I love the idea of these challenges, but as a recent SF transplant\new job seeker, I'm absolutely appalled at how awful the execution usually is: 1. Company A sends me an exercise with slapped together and near nonsensical instructions, no browser compatibility requirements, and a link to a data API that doesn't resolve. Keep in mind this is an established company offering big bucks. After getting them to send me a link to a working API, submit perfectly functioning implementation with squeaky-clean code (~2 hour exercise). Receive absolutely no fucking feedback whatsoever - I only know that I was explicitly rejected because the 3rd party recruiter eventually told me. Still would love to know what they took issue with (maybe they were offended when I asked for clarification on their washy challenge?). 2. Company B sends me a ~5 hour Ruby coding exercise for a JavaScript position. In both cases, a complete lack of respect for my time has been demonstrated. How naive of me to think that the quality of companies out here would be better. I'm thinking of calling quits on getting a new and exciting job out here already. Don't get me started with the other pieces of interview "process" of encountered. Yeesh.

117 points by bastawhiz 13y ago

Building a full production grade website seems extreme, but giving a prebuilt website to a front end candidate and asking them to add a few simple pages or features is basically fizzbuzz type vetting. I also like it when coding "challenges" are timeboxed to say 1-2 hours. This keeps the time expectations reasonable for both the interviewer who has to read a bunch of candidates' challenges and the interviewee who has to do them for (potentially) a bunch of gigs. The type of coding challenge a company asks (interview questions also) can be one of the most important data points to use to judge a company's culture...

mason55 13y ago
Yes exactly, this is overboard. We have "take home test" (I hate that term but haven't come up with anything better) for both our front-end and back-end candidates. They're (a) Short - 45 minutes to an hour (b) Only as complex as necessary (for the front end we provide and end-point serving JSON, for example, so they don't have to worry about that) (c) Real problems we've run into, distilled down into a form appropriate for an interview (d) Made up of problems that we were having candidates do on the whiteboard before we developed the at-home test, meaning they're not super complex I think that at-home coding is the perfect second step to an interview (after a phone screen). It's more realistic than whiteboard coding. You have the internet at your fingertips. You don't have the pressure of an interviewer sitting there. You have syntax checking. From my side, I don't have to waste 30 - 60 minutes on a bad candidate. And, assuming the code is good, reviewing it provides an awesome first hour of an in person interview. And the problems I give you to take home would have been given to you in person anyway, so you're not spending any more time than you would have if you'd just come in for an interview. The issue here is that the tests he's being given are bad examples of a take home test, not that take home tests are bad ipso facto.
- henrik_w 13y ago
  Have you (or people on your team) done the task yourselves? It's easy to underestimate the effort required.
  - mason55 13y ago
    Yes absolutely. They're all problems that we've solved in the process of building out our product. In addition to that, as I mentioned, we originally gave them as white board questions, so we're well aware of the issues that come up when solving the problems and the effort required to resolve the issues. Our front-end test is a bit longer than the back-end test with a tradeoff of a shorter in person interview, but the front-end test shouldn't take more than 90 minutes. One of our problems is a small matching algorithm. Another is a thread safety problem. The front-end test consists of pulling JSON data from a server, formatting it, and posting a single action back to the server. It sounds like we're in a minority though. Reading these other posts it seems like a lot of the tests are very onerous (build a small trading system? that is a ton of work).
    - MAGZine 13y ago
      > They're all problems that we've solved in the process of building out our product Have you gotten feedback on the questions? It's easy to say that it's a valid question, but when you're close to the problem, it's easy to make a mistake since you might encounter a specific sort of problem that others might not be nearly as familiar with. The difference to me I think is that yours are very specific, and "build a small trading system" can be very general. If it's timeboxed, there might be only so much that you can do--i.e. you might not be expected to complete the task. You want to test someone's knowledge, without being too 'in depth'. A candidate that can solve a problem on his own in 30 minutes isn't necessarily better than a candidate who can solve the problem in 10 minutes with the assistance of Google. 0.02
      - mason55 13y ago
        Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely take a look at getting an outside opinion on our takehome test

theg2 13y ago

If a company asked me that, I'd tell them thanks but no thanks and end the interview. Ask me a few questions, have me solve your riddles, see if I'd work well with your team/company. But building an entire production ready site? Ain't nobody got time for that.

laureny 13y ago
Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site, this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article. If I were a front end developer, I would much prefer to be asked to write a quick, tailored to fit within the time allotment (e.g. one hour) web site rather than answering obscure coding puzzles that probably have little relevance with what I'll actually be doing at the company. As the interviewer, I would phrase it as: "Build as much as you can in one hour, with the following functionalities in order of decreased priorities: login, cart, etc...". Then I would judge you on how much of it you built, how solid each of the features are, etc. In my book, you can choose to go broad (build a lot of features, albeit superficially) or broad (only a few features, but well designed, tested, clean code).
- trustfundbaby 13y ago
  > Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article. How can you be so sure? Were you there? You're essentially calling the author a liar without even pretending to have access to more data than that author. Thats just rude. If you know something that the rest of us don't that would lead you to make such a forceful assertion, please share.
- bastawhiz 13y ago
  > Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site, this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article. I'm sad to say that this is untrue, and that in writing this article I have not exaggerated the requirements in the least. I'm not going to name the company, but the requirements of the challenge indicate that it should be something you would be comfortable putting in production. The "challenge" is a repo on the company's github. I'm sure you could probably easily find it with a bit of sleuthing.

neakor 13y ago

The code challenge is usually just one part of the interview process to see if you can produce a quality product within a certain amount of time. It's not designed to tell every single thing you outlined in your post. It's meant to provide some signal before the actual on-site interview occurs. The on-site interview is expensive on the company's part, it is easier to filter out people who can't solve a simple full-stack solution. Companies who ask things like these are looking for people who understand both front and back ends. In short, just knowing either front or backend but not both, is not enough for the company.

RogerL 13y ago
We all know why they are asking candidates to do this. The question is whether this is a reasonable way to go about getting this information.
- ArtDev 13y ago
  My work speaks for itself and I am more than happy to share working codes samples. I had someone offer me a paid test. I refused because I am too busy. By requiring coding tests, employers and managers may be accidentally selecting only desperate candidates.

mbell 13y ago

I have to say, that headline font is awful and the link highlighting on the blog's front page is worse. There is a bit of oddness in declaring yourself a front-end person by talking about not needing to be tested as a back-end person when you're applying for a front-end job yet having a blog with a such a jarring front-end.

untog 13y ago
I hope one day we can get to the point where we discuss the content of a post on HN, and not cast subjective opinion about its presentation. I don't think there is anything wrong with the headline font. I'm not too fond of the link highlighting used on the front page, but it's fine. Really. And you can be a "front end person" and have very, very little to do with design these days. Entire webapps are made on the front-end.
- mbell 13y ago
  Presentation is always important. It doesn't matter if it's a scientific paper or blog, presenting in a clear and intelligible way is critical to communication in all forms. As for the content: I've dealt with numerous developers who only want to do one thing, only backend, only front-end, only design. I've constantly run into shenanigans when working with such people in a fast paced dynamic environment. "I can't work on the frontend till the backend api is finished", "I can't work on the backend till the frontend data requirements are defined", "I can't work on the frontend till the UI/UX are defined". It's a never ending requirements dependency argument. More capable full stack people are able to mock or fake the bits that are as of yet undefined allowing them to continue working on their core piece while gaining a better understand of the system as a whole. This allows them to contribute to the product definition at all levels instead of just living in their own little piece of it, waiting for definition from outside.
jasonlotito 13y ago
So, I decided to treat your awful comment like you decided to treat the original article. > I have to That's not true. You don't have to reply. No one is requiring you do that. You've already started off by lying. This means anything else you might want to contribute is awful and worthless. > say You didn't. You typed it out. I'm pretty sure you didn't "say" anything. And now you are trying to be confusing. That's just awful. > , that headline font is awful Well, that's your opinion. Your opinion is worthless because you haven't validated your credentials. > and the link highlighting on the blog's front page is worse. So, not the page we were directed to. Did you happen to check out his Facebook page, too? Did you decide to comment on his awful dinner choice last night? > There is a bit of oddness This whole sentence is odd. In fact, that sentence is far worse than anything the OP did. You would say it's awful. In this case, you'd be right, because it's a shit sentence. > in declaring yourself a front-end person by talking about not needing to be tested as a back-end person That's not what he's doing. He's saying he's a front-end person, and was tested for back-end work. He's not saying he's a front-end person by talking about not needing to be tested as a back-end person. Those are two completely different things. If you don't immediately understand why, I apologize, but you wrote the awful and confusing sentence. > when you're applying for a front-end job yet having a blog with a such a jarring front-end. What's jarring about it? Surely you aren't speaking of the design. That would be a designer, not a front-end person. And we've established he's not apply for a designer's position. Unless you are suggesting all designers should be expert programmers? Because that's the only way what you said remotely makes any sense. Awful, just awful.

billyjobob 13y ago

His complaints seem to be that this method of take-home-project is not as good as the method of hiring the candidate to work in the office temporarily for week's trial. That is true, but this is still superior to a typical interview. (Also not all candidates and not all employers can spare a week to do a trial.) Nevertheless you should never agree to complete a full production project without being paid.

gesman 13y ago
Or decode the source code upon the full payment.
theboss 13y ago
Is it? I "interviewed" at one YC funded startup in particular and they asked me to build a trivially small and simple js application (even though I applied for a DevOps position, but I guess devops is different for everyone...). The only communication up to this point was over e-mail and I sent a resume. I built it. It worked. Then they said my application was not aesthetic enough and said thank you for your time. The whole thing seemed backwards... In my opinion (as someone who has been going through the process for a few years now throughout undergrad with internships and now looking for a full time job at the end of my masters), very few companies do the "coding" problem right. I don't want to work for you if you ask me to write a nested for loop and regurgitate the overhead involved in searching a b-tree. I also don't want to work for you if you ask me to build a application with no pre-defined criteria. In my opinion...the best coding question you can ask me is fizzbuzz types of questions or pseudo-code for something complex (to see if the candidate can think through the steps of solving the complex problem without having to waste the time solving it). So far not a single company has done the below.
- eropple 13y ago
  Pretty sure I interviewed at the same place, with the same reaction. I wasn't too impressed.

ChristianMarks 13y ago

Lately I have been solving coding challenges. For the sake of solving them only. I submit them, wait for "good job!" or "nice work!" and move on to the next challenge--at the next company. After a few months or years of doing this, I may decide to advance to technical phone screens on shared documents. I'll try that for a while. After that who knows...

jcoder 13y ago
I understand the desire for a challenge, but you might consider not submitting them. Effort goes into advancing a candidate's application at each stage, so someone out there is wasting their time so you can get your "good job!" boost.
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  It's a tough market. It can take years to hone your problem-solving skills. And years after that to hone your technical-phone-screen-on-shared-document skills. This takes deliberate practice. When I'm ready to advance to the next stage, I will. There is a serious point: companies often aren't forthcoming about day-to-day working conditions. But the response you get to your puzzle solving activities can be telling.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

henrik_w 13y ago

Even "small" programming assignments take a lot of time. Several years ago, I applied for a job as a developer for a financial trading system. The take-home assignment was to build a small trading system that received buy and sell orders from the command line, and executed trades when the price matched. The input was just: buy/sell, price and number of shares. This functionality is pretty simple, but it still took many hours to code. My feeling was that they thought it would perhaps take an hour to do. It was fun and interesting to do, but it took much longer than I thought. I think the companies giving the challenges should have their own engineers do the task, so they get a good handle on how much they are asking from the applicant. And of course it also depends on if it is a buyer's or seller's market (jobwise that is, not in terms of my "trading" system). If there is a lot of competition for developers, maybe they should give too big projects.

McGlockenshire 13y ago

We used to ask job candidates to do something similar. Since then, publishing code samples became the normal thing to do, so we simply require code samples instead, and give out the coding task only when they have nothing at all to share with us. If you're in the job market, publishing some sample code, even if it's just a throwaway toy instead of, say, a full blown OSS project, can be a great tool for people to evaluate you as a candidate.

silverbax88 13y ago
I would never go to an interview which wanted to present me with a code challenge, and I don't have publicly available code repositories for you to browse. What I do have is years of experience building mission critical applications that move millions of dollars per day in transactions, and I have a solid track record of being easy to work with. I am good at what I do and I work hard to be an asset to any company that employs me, and I work hard to be enjoyable to work with. If you can't be good enough to figure that out from a conversation and looking at my track record, why would I work for you? BTW, I haven't had to look for a job in over 13 years - although I've worked for several companies during that time.
- mooreds 13y ago
  tl;dr: if companies know that they are going to miss quality candidates with a code challenge, and are ok with that, it's ok to have one. If candidates are ok with giving some companies the miss because they won't put up with a challenge, that's ok too. And code challenges are good for some types of positions and not others. I agree that companies are excluding people such as yourself with these coding challenges. That's their right, just as it is your right to not apply to any companies that require such challenges. If someone is finding good candidates with a coding challenge, that's great. If someone is finding good jobs while avoiding coding challenges, that's great too. I will say that there's some nuance implied in your comment that simply isn't present in any of the github/coding challenge blog posts that have popped up on HN over the last few days. Whether a coding challenge is appropriate doesn't just depend on the company or the candidate--it also depends on the position! It's far easier to test junior/mid level skills than senior skills in a 1-2 hour task. Geez, some of the skills you mention above would be hard to test in a 1-2 day task. When you are looking for esoteric, softer, or more senior skills (requirements gathering, or architecture), you need other ways of evaluating candidates beyond a code challenge. Things like what you suggest: conversations, references, etc. Of course, there are some "senior" folks out there who aren't great coders even though they talk a good game, and if coding is what the position requires, a code challenge is fine.

websitescenes 13y ago

Totally agree. I am so busy creating and making real products, that I just don't have time for silly quizzes or challenges. If you like my work, hire me. If you don't, then don't waste my time. I was seeking employment in the Bay area briefly and did three code tests. Absolute waste of time that didn't reflect my skill, diligence or anything for that matter. After I realized that these techniques were the norm, I quit looking. I have way better things to do with my time.

dustingetz 13y ago

Pro tip: these tests are filtering mechanism on only one candidate funnel. Go figure out a way to get in through another funnel. Impress someone at a meetup, send a targetted email. If you can't distinguish yourself from the masses, you are the masses.

vinceguidry 13y ago
Personally, I wouldn't bother. Asinine requirements are usually the product of asinine leadership and toxic environment. Just find another company to apply to.

JSno 13y ago

Though it really based on what lever you are at. This kinda tests are always for entry-mid level recruitment I guess. I agree with author 100 percent.

llamataboot 13y ago

On the other hand, as someone currently looking for my first dev job, I'd /much/ rather have a take home code challenge, where I can work at my usual pace, with my usual tools, without stress than have to do a code challenge while someone hovers over my shoulder. The take homes have been time intensive - I would say the average one has taken about 15 hours to do, but I feel they much better reflect my ability to code than real time nervous coding.

overgryphon 13y ago
Your perspective changes when you need to find that extra 15 hours of time while also working full time. Apply to 2-3 companies at once, and all of a sudden 30-45 hours are added on to your normal work week.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

I actually had one of these and I won't do another one either. Here's the gist of how it went down: 1) first part was the "personality" interview. Two "HR" people blew smoke up my ass for about 30 minutes about how awesome my site and my work was, then asked me to do a "code challenge". I agreed - I mean, how bad could it be? 2) The code challenge. I was given a PSD with a straight forward design. Asked to code it, make sure it worked in legacy browsers, publish on a server and show them the code on GitHub 3) Passed and then was asked to come back and explain some of my coding decisions. I was told this was more for show and I was already in effect hired, I just had to pass this last hurdle. It turned out to be a very confrontational, inquisition type of an interview. Not at all the type of laid back code review I'm used it. I got pretty frustrated by the two "Senior" devs who seemed to take great pride in tearing my code and my decisions apart. After my first heated exchange with one of the devs, I actually asked them how many of the sites listed in the gallery on their site they actually tested and validated the code on. They said "All of them, why do you ask?" I told them I actually ran all of their sites through the W3C validation site and none of them passed. Every single one had over 60 errors on it. I basically said, "If standards are so important to you, then why are you holding people who don't even work for your company to a higher standard than those who actually do?" There was a long silence and then I finally spoke up and said, "Clearly, this company has its priorities in the wrong order. Thank you for time, but I'm not interested." and got up and walked out. I got several worried calls from the company recruiter, but by then I was so pissed at how much of my time they had wasted, and vowed never to do something like it again.

atmosx 13y ago
Hahaha good going. Interesting story, thanks for sharing.
zalew 13y ago
> I got pretty frustrated by the two "Senior" devs who seemed to take great pride in tearing my code and my decisions apart. Two possibilities: a) You got a glimpse of how your life on the job would look like. b) Just like qualified specialists can be terrible interviewees, they can be terrible interviewers. They just screwed up.

ForHackernews 13y ago

I happen to really like coding challenges. I much prefer them to a "technical interview" situation, which I find very stressful--trying to answer difficult questions in real time. However, the coding challenges I've done for applications have always been in the vein of "solve this interesting puzzle and show us how you did it", not "do some boring day-to-day work, but do it for free".

ddoolin 13y ago
This exactly. With the exception of my current employer, who asked me to make a small static site with some JS oddities (about 6 hours total), they've all been fairly simple challenges just to get a grip on my thinking process, not really have me do the routine stuff.

sumodds 13y ago

I agree and disagree. I am a candidate and prefer coding challenges provided they are reasonable. Meaning, if you are wanting to check the person's ability in x, check the person ability in x, not y. So for example give a starter code with part that would showcase person talent in x is left out. Yes, this involves prior effort on the part of the company to come up with this exercise and on the person. I don't quite vouch for code samples, because it is very difficult to understand where they came up with the ideas and who wrote the code, and if it was a multi-person project. In the former case, it is a very controlled experiment and one you designed, so one can judge much better.

goshx 13y ago

While I agree that the request to build, deploy and open source the code of a website is a bit too much, I think you are exaggerating a little bit on the why's you wouldn't do it. "I'm not equipped to do your challenge" - really? "Engineers aren't different" - again, really? Rhetorical question: you don't want the job, do you? I am not sure if the issue is with the hiring process, or with the candidates' ego here. Candidates. Plural. As the article's author doesn't seem to be the only one. Apparently there is a lot of people that believe they are rockstars and they don't need the job, the job needs them. Challenges like this help to figure out non technical skills as well, like: how committed a candidate is; how much he wants that job. I'd rather hire a junior that is committed than a senior that is not.

0A0D66 13y ago
You're not supposed to be committed to a job.
- goshx 13y ago
  When I work for a company, I want to make sure that whatever I am working on will help the company succeed. I want to be part of that success. This is commitment. I am not there just to get the pay check for my 9 to 5 hours and move on to another company because they offered me extra $5 bucks.
  - sanskritabelt 13y ago
    This is 2013. You gotta look out for Number One.
  - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
    If only modern companies had a similar view toward their employees. The fact is, whatever your particular situation, most companies don't return the exuberant loyalty you have for them. Although some have managers who are skilled enough salesmen to make you believe otherwise.
    - 13y ago

darklajid 13y ago

I understand the point the author's trying to make. For me, personally, this would be the better choice to judge my skills - and probably would lead to better chances for me to get the job. I suck at these braindead trick questions that are considered 'clever'. I'm not comfortable around a whiteboard only, being grilled by one or more other people while thinking. I'm not slow, not really anyway. But I'm faster and better the more I know about the stuff at hand. I'll be good on the job, I'll suck solving math puzzles that some guy just read about in a book that ranks high on Amazon's list of code puzzle collections.. So - I'm glad that there's both. The author obviously would've preferred to show his skills live, in a discussion. This guy here would be happy to hand you a (small, mind you - I agree with the time-sink argument) finished project and discuss _that_ afterwards.

memracom 13y ago

To my mind the ideal challenge is no more than 4 hours. You make an appointment. At the agreed time, the hiring company emails you the requirements. If you have clarification question, they remain available throughout the challenge time to answer them. From a hiring point of view the challenge should have some vague areas in the requirements in order to test whether the candidate is a coder or a developer who asks decent clarification questions. The challenge requires no special tools to do, either JS in a browser or Python or something like that. The exact requirments of the dev environment are specified at the time the appointment is made, i.e. if you want the person to develop in Python 2.6.3 or to use JS with backbone.js, then the candidate can get set up in a few minutes and be ready. I consider 4 hours to be a max. 45 minutes is a bit short IMHO and does not allow for including unit tests. Also, I believe that a good challenge should ask for a complete set of unit tests as well. But a full working MVP is way overboard and is too complex for the hirer to make meaningful decisions based on the outcome. Any challenge should be followed up by an interview in which questions focus on the solution as developed by the candidate. The why of choices and the intent are important factors, probably more important than the actual code.

saryant 13y ago
This is essentially what we do. Write a program to fetch some data from S3 using these credentials we made you, perform some analysis on them (algorithm question, generally with recursion) and then display the final output. And write a test for it. We provide a stubbed-out Rails project on Github so they don't have to know all the details about S3. With this we test three things: 1) Can they quickly find missing info on Google/Stack Overflow (S3 stubs) 2) Can they handle recursion? (Algorithm question) 3) Can they write a test? Then we go over their submission on Skype. It's worked pretty well for us.

kohanz 13y ago

You have no idea how the "challenge" was completed. A candidate could have rent-a-coder-ed the project, refactored it a bit, and slapped their name on it. Sure, if you ask no follow-up questions after the challenge is completed. However, with a few well-placed questions about the implementation and some inspection of the code, it'll be quite clear whether you're talking to the author or not. We once gave a (non-web-dev) programming "challenge" (I thought it was a joke/insult given the candidate's claimed experience) to a senior dev candidate. Mind you, this was on-site. I even tested it by putting our newly hired grad to the test and he aced it within 20 minutes. We gave the candidate an hour to complete it (and added a 30 minute extension when he was struggling). The challenge involved developing something against an SDK (interacting with a camera) and we gave him internet access and the SDK examples to work off of. In the end, he produced something not quite what we were asking, but he was sure to claim it as his work. Although it wasn't ideal, I was prepared to say that he "passed" the assignment, because he was close and I was sympathetic to factors of stress and nervousness. As he was toured around the facility, I inspected the code and saw that he was completely passing off one of the SDK examples as his own work (diffs showed only two variable names had been changed). The reason his code didn't quite do what we wanted, is that he wasn't even able to tweak the SDK example to do what we asked. He was a complete fraud and never mind technical ability, we couldn't have dishonesty like that on the team. Before that interview I thought those kind of challenges were a joke, but after this I saw their value. Of course, their value depends highly on how their are implemented and targeted, but dismiss their usefulness at your own peril.

Iftheshoefits 13y ago
This is a lopsided view. You don't indicate how long your "newly hired grad" was working there, whether the "SDK" was an in-house SDK or a third-party one, what the candidate's resume skills were in comparison to the kind of programming around the SDK your test was designed for, etc. These are all relevant details, because except for the most trivial of SDKs and their appropriate domains, a thoughtful, skilled developer might spend an entire hour simply reading through the SDK and/or its documentation to get a handle on its capabilities. So I don't get that your story is an anecdote in support of the potential usefulness of code challenges. Instead, what I gather from your story is that your company prefers candidates who practice cowboy, shoot-from-the-hip programming instead of thoughtfully approaching a new, unfamiliar SDK and pondering how it might be used to solve problems related to the domain it was built for, then applying this thoughtful process to provide a solution to a problem. In fact, if I'm given a non-trivial SDK and told "write a program that does X using this SDK; you have one hour", my response might be something very similar to the above, directed at the person giving the "assignment" out, followed by a polite but firm indication that the company doesn't meet my requirements.

greenyoda 13y ago

I wonder whether the same companies that insist that job candidates spend a day of their lives on a "code challenge" are the same ones complaining about good developers being impossible to find.

coldcode 13y ago

If someone asked me to write an iOS app for them for free as a test I'd offer them to download some of my work from the App Store. Otherwise, no.

jbcurtin2 13y ago

The worst thing about code-challenges, is they never give feed back. We're sorry, but what you produced is not good enough. We're not going to tell you what you missed. At least technology tells you what you missed. If you have a standard, have it documented so that I'm not firing a bullet into the dark. Chances are I'm just as good as you; but you won't know because I haven't seen your coding style. You're on my project, you code like me. I'm on yours, you better believe I'll code like you. And then there is the times they like to dismiss you for it but have some other reason and use it as a cover. So you worry about your code not being perfect and you develop a ritual to validate yourself before it goes through a compiler. Yep, I write my code three(avg) times now. 10 lines, over and over until it's a effing poem. It's called ocd. Coding challenges, pfft, worthless. There is only one company that I did a coding challenge for in the past year and it's because they were really awesome people. - I'm here to make a product and work with a team. I'm not here to explain shit to you just so you can tell me to look up the documentation. If I take the time to explain my code to you, you better well explain why you think something is better rather then telling me to google it. fufff, I needed that.

eropple 13y ago
> The worst thing about code-challenges, is they never give feed back. We're sorry, but what you produced is not good enough. We're not going to tell you what you missed. This is most interviews in general, and I hate that. When interviewing candidates I try to give actionable feedback to each of them, regardless of whether it results in whiny emails back (and it often does). There was only one case in recent memory where I couldn't because he'd gotten literally nothing right while bragging about how fun it was to write thousand-line functions. Eek.

ndesaulniers 13y ago

I told FB the same thing, too!

mrpoptart 13y ago

Your td;dr: should go at the top. Having started working at a company that asked me to do one of these, it was different specifically in that it was paid. This means it's not a waste of anyone's time. A time-constrained, feature-rich project shows a number of things about a programmer including how they handle pressure, how they prioritize their tasks, whether their estimates are reasonable, and whether they know about what you're hiring them for.

moron4hire 13y ago

I get approached all the time by recruiters who supposedly love my work and want me to interview with their clients. It's getting harder to tell them that I'm not interested in a job. My consulting is doing okay and I'm actually starting to hire out some work. Why would I give that up, for a dice roll with a good chance of losing on whether or not my new boss turns out to be an asshole?

ChristianMarks 13y ago
Good point. Getting to get back into consulting for that reason.

redblacktree 13y ago

If you use a coding challenge as part of your hiring process, please take the time to give feedback to candidates. I recently completed a code challenge, and I was told by the recruiter that there were "problems with it," but he didn't get into any specifics because he was just passing on the message, and no one else has called either. I look at it as a dodged bullet, since it's a sign that they don't respect my time. I expect that had I gotten the job, they wouldn't have respected my free time or created a good work/life balance. Regardless, it has left a bad taste in my mouth. After I've spent about 12 hours of my free time (in addition to my 40 hr/week job), the least they could do is give me 15 minutes of their time to call or write out some comments about it.

ukd1 13y ago

If you're being hired to code, expect to be asked to code in an interview process.

mellery451 13y ago
not many other fields of work where that analog exists, so I call BS. What's the personalized test given to CPAs? Sales? Marketers? You ask about past experience, accomplishments, etc..but rarely put them under the gun to produce on the spot.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  This problem is typically solved through certification. As none exists in our world, we have to improvise.

justrudd 13y ago

Many years ago (wow...almost 10 now...I'm so old...) I was given a phone screen and at the end of the screen I was given a question to code a solution to and email it in. Since this was for a job across the country, I figure what the hell. The problem was - A man has to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river. He has a rowboat, and it can only carry him and one other thing. If the fox and the chicken are left together, the fox will eat the chicken. If the chicken and the corn is left together, the chicken will eat the corn. Write a program that will help the man make the correct decision and explain the operational complexity. I was given an hour to come up with a solution. I worked on it about half-an-hour coming up with the algorithm. And then for some reason my brain keyed in on the "write a program" part of the question. So I wrote the following in C++ (from memory so may not be exact) - int main(int argc, char** argv) { std::cout << "Man takes chicken, leaves fox and corn, and returns" << std::endl << "Man takes fox, leaves corn, and returns with chicken" << std::endl << "Man leaves chicken and takes corn, leaves corn with fox, and returns" << std::endl << "Man takes chicken back across" << std::endl; return 0; } It was a program that would tell the man the correct way to get everything across the river. Must have been an OK answer because I got flown up and ended up working for them for 4 years (before a series of bad jobs that have finally lead back to something good).

saumil07 13y ago

Sigh - yet another hiring process complaint post. As an employer hopefully I can shed some light here. a) If you are trying to hire 5 engineers, say, you need to talk to ~25 candidates at least. It's a competitive market. b) If you aim to talk to 25 candidates in a short period of time, you need to have SOME standard way to evaluate candidates if you don't want to just throw darts on the board. Being sloppy with process is bad for companies and the engineers and a waste of everyone's time. c) In order to create a standard process, you have a very limited # of options to work from. I've seen comments like "do a co-working day to get a real sense" or "do a contract and see them work with you daily" positioned as realistic options. They are not. If an engineer has an existing full-time job they don't have the time to do co-working days or contracts. d) The other options are 1) whiteboard interviews 2) coding challenges 3) some combination thereof. e) Lots of candidates hate whiteboard interviews. Lots of candidates hate coding challenges too. Neither is a perfect system but it's better than doing nothing or asking for co-working time. f) We use coding challenges at the top end but we time-box it to 3 hours. If someone asked us to pay for the time, we would happily do so. g) Our coding challenges have 3 different problems so candidates can pick whichever aligns best to skills. One problem is JavaScript-heavy and 2 others are Ruby/Rails-heavy. h) Several engineers on the team solved the coding challenges on a timed basis before we put them out to candidates. Doing otherwise would be stupid/unfair. i) In the few cases where we've been able to do 1-2 co-working days, we have offered to pay for the candidate's time. Not full freight consulting dollars but something that indicates our seriousness. j) In this case, the OP got caught by a dumb coding challenge to build a full website. But the headline paints with a broad brush because coding challenges by themselves are not evil. They are a tool that can be used well or poorly. That's all.

mempko 13y ago
Remember, as an employer, you are getting more out of the employee than they are getting out of you. Otherwise you don't make a profit. I understand why you want to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. But seriously, fuck you. How about a better answer. Unless the person just came out of school, don't treat then as though they just came out of school.
- 13y ago

candybar 13y ago

Every time this comes up, I find it quite depressing how everyone becomes so self-centered. Half the comments here are along the lines of: I'm good at X, but bad at Y, so X is a better way to judge programmers than Y and if you do Y, your process is broken because I'm awesome despite being bad at Y. Another small fraction of the comments are: I don't care if you can't do X despite being good or won't do Y because it's a big hassle - the bug is a feature and it filters out people who are not into our instasnapsocialmobileresponsiveapp. Get real guys, no one's that into you, some people are just desperate. Pretending that you're some prestigious company where everyone wants to work doesn't make it so - you have to earn it and if you get there, you won't have to pretend because you'd get so many resumes that you'll be forced come up with a quick way to be selective. The secret to hiring is just like what pg said about the secret to VC investing - get better at distinguishing good programmers from bad ones so that you don't need to waste so much of everyone's time to make a decision. Being indecisive, after being clearly presented with enough information is a sign of incompetence.

flippybean 13y ago

If you are going to do a code challenge, and take time out of your life to work on something without pay, the very least a company should do in return is provide feedback, good or bad. too many times I've done a code challenge and it's never even mentioned in follow up interviews. And if I don't pass the challenge, I should learn something from my time spent, right?

lumens 13y ago

Many companies butcher their interview processes, so it's not surprising to hear this story. That said, OP's refusal of code challenges all together seems every bit as silly as being asked to jump through the hoops described. If we were to take a moment to think about the purpose of interviews at a high level: Initial Interviews (Phone/HR/etc) - Determine mutual interest - Estimate likelihood of match - Check for red flags Follow-up Interviews (With team/Code Challenges/etc) - Confirm initial impressions - Evaluate finer points of fit (skills, etc) - Determine final interest Each of the interview goals above apply to both the interviewer and interviewee. Failures happen when either side tries to monkey with this formula too much. If your job is to write code and be an engineer, it's not outlandish to think that you'll be asked to write code as part of your evaluation for a new position. It's also not too much to expect that as an interviewee, you should be properly sold on the job by the interviewer before being asked to invest time to prove your skills. (Both sides should estimate high likelihood of match before confirming impressions) If the company's preference is to hire full-stack engineers into front-end jobs, fine — more power to them. But those expectations should be included way up front in the process, so candidates like OP can mark a "red flag" and opt out of additional interviews. TL;DR: Properly setting expectations in the interview process is ultra-important, but rarely practiced. Note: I'm the founder of Mighty Spring (https://www.mightyspring.com https://www.mightyspring.com), an anonymous, passive job discovery site. Part of our service is to help our clients (companies) hire more efficiently by coaching them up on interview process improvements like this. We're in private beta now, but send out new candidate invites regularly.

mathattack 13y ago

The single most important point is that the process is candidate unfriendly. You can get away with being candidate unfriendly during college hiring. Maybe. If you're not hiring at a top CS school. You can't get away with it when you are trying to reel in a 10x superstar. Those types of candidates need to be wooed. If you make someone do too much work in the process, you'll only wind up with candidates who hate their jobs, not love their jobs. That's not to say don't make sure people are smart. And the idea of proving coding skills is good too. But the manner has to be consistent with respecting the time and skills of an expert.

pedalpete 13y ago

For the most part, I'm happy to do most of the coding challenges I've been asked to do. I've been lucky that in most of the challenges I've been able to learn something about how to make a certain algorithm that I hadn't done before, of I've enjoyed the feedback about using method x vs. method y. However, I've had two coding challenges which I did not like. In the first was just too time consuming (more than 3 hours) and I stopped working on it because I felt it was taking too much time, and the second was on-site without an internet connection where when I drew a blank on using setInterval, and couldn't remember document.getElementsByClass (I was trying getElementByClass) I was unable to look-up the answer, which basically meant I had to sit there wracking my brain trying to remember and completely failed a test which would have been a walk in the park otherwise. At the same time, the two companies that I've chosen to work for have not asked for coding challenges. My current employer did look at my GitHub profile, I don't think my previous employer did. I think that supplying sample code should be enough for most employers, hopefully there is a way to confirm the applicant wrote the code they are taking credit for (I've had somebody claim to build one of my sites before, so it's happened. I got a bunch of e-mails by people asking me for a reference). Another good way for businesses to decide on a coding question (if they decide to do one at all) is to take questions from larger successful technology businesses. I had one company ask me to complete one of the questions from Spotify https://www.spotify.com/au/jobs/ https://www.spotify.com/au/jobs/, it didn't take very long at all (may 40 minutes) and if it is good enough for Spotify, it is probably good enough for your company.

EpicEng 13y ago

I don't care about code challenges either, I just always assumed that people don't care that I don't care.

leeny 13y ago

i don't think every candidate should be interviewed the same way, and i don't think these processes should be set in stone. if you look great on paper (e.g. have some nice name brands on your resume, are a minor celebrity in some relevant community, or come in through a strong internal referral), there's no need for stuff like this. however, if you don't fall into one of these categories, until there's a reliable way to tell if you're good from your resume, having an OPTIONAL coding challenge is a great way to get your foot in the door. coding challenges shouldn't be about making people jump through arbitrary procedural hoops. they should be about making the (very broken) eng hiring process more meritocratic for people who'd never get their foot in the door otherwise.

throwaway84 13y ago

I love the idea of these challenges, but as a recent SF transplant\new job seeker, I'm absolutely appalled at how awful the execution usually is: 1. Company A sends me an exercise with slapped together and near nonsensical instructions, no browser compatibility requirements, and a link to a data API that doesn't resolve. Keep in mind this is an established company offering big bucks. After getting them to send me a link to a working API, submit perfectly functioning implementation with squeaky-clean code (~2 hour exercise). Receive absolutely no fucking feedback whatsoever - I only know that I was explicitly rejected because the 3rd party recruiter eventually told me. Still would love to know what they took issue with (maybe they were offended when I asked for clarification on their washy challenge?). 2. Company B sends me a ~5 hour Ruby coding exercise for a JavaScript position. In both cases, a complete lack of respect for my time has been demonstrated. How naive of me to think that the quality of companies out here would be better. I'm thinking of calling quits on getting a new and exciting job out here already. Don't get me started with the other pieces of interview "process" of encountered. Yeesh.